Nanotechnology has been a revolutionary science utilised to improve water supplies, screen for viruses and increase durability in food among its other uses. Nanoscience has also been used to produce products such as stain resistant clothing and is often found in cosmetic products such as anti-ageing creams and sunscreen. With this technology being so widely used, questions are being raised as to how safe nanotechnology is in products that are rubbed directly onto human skin.

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

A potentially dangerous acne medication is to become more widely available.

Isotretinoin (Isotane) has a range of side effects including risks for pregnant women, and there was ongoing debate around the evidence of increased risk of suicidal thoughts. http://www.stuff.co.nz/4798467a11.html

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In the fields the bodies are burning as the war machine keeps on churning

sociostudent

Isn't Isotretinoin the same thing as accutane? Accutane causes HORRIBLE birth defects and from what I remember. the pharmacy manager would have to speak with the customer EVERY TIME someone would be prescribed this. I don't know anything about suicidal thoughts, but it's pretty highly controlled here in the U.S. because of the risk of the birth defects alone. This stuff is pretty toxic.

THE State Government says the introduction of fluoridated water could cost it votes at the next state election.

But Deputy Premier Paul Lucas has declared it is a price he is willing to pay to improve children's dental health.

Dosage units began adding fluoride to drinking water at many South East Queensland treatment plants last month, although Redland City supplies will not be fluoridated until late 2009.

A State Government flyer recently distributed to some local households incorrectly claimed the Redlands was part of the December 2008 roll-out.

The introduction of fluoride in water supplies has won strong support from the Australian Medical Association and the Australian Dental Association which say the move will bring Queensland into line with other states and will help reduce tooth decay among the younger population.

However, some protest groups, such as Queenslanders for Safe Water, Air and Food, have questioned the promoted benefits of fluoride, raised fears about health risks and warned the government should not engage in "mass medication".

Mr Lucas told The Redland Times he was determined to prevent tooth decay, even if it cost the government votes.

"This has made us unpopular with some people . . . and we make no apologies for that," the infrastructure and planning minister said during an interview at Wellington Point.

"I'm happy to lose some votes in some quarters if kids lose less teeth."

The State Government points to a 1996 study that showed children in Townsville, where the water was already fluoridated, had 40 per cent less tooth decay than those in Brisbane.

But anti-fluoridation advocates continue to raise concerns over the practice.

Bill Snoddy, of Cleveland, told Redland City councillors in a speech last month they should stand up to the State Government and prevent the "mass fluoridation" of local water supplies, saying the public needed to learn the other side of the story about fluoride.

Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg has sought to capitalise on anti-fluoridation sentiment in the lead-up to this year's election by promising greater consultation on fluoride in areas where the substance had not yet been added to water supplies.

The Infrastructure Department and Seqwater have repeatedly confirmed Redland City water sources are not due to be fluoridated until the end of December 2009.

It is understood tenders for the installation of dosage units at local treatment plants have not been called for yet.

"We can't do everything immediately," Mr Lucas said.

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

Isn't Isotretinoin the same thing as accutane? Accutane causes HORRIBLE birth defects and from what I remember. the pharmacy manager would have to speak with the customer EVERY TIME someone would be prescribed this. I don't know anything about suicidal thoughts, but it's pretty highly controlled here in the U.S. because of the risk of the birth defects alone. This stuff is pretty toxic.

Yes, it trades under that name.

Overview of Existing Research and Information Linking Isotretinoin (Accutane), Depression, Psychosis, and Suicide.

Abstract: Less well known is the risk of this lipid-soluble chemical to affect the central nervous system. Reports of intracranial hypertension, depression, and suicidal ideation with Accutane use have prompted an examination of its serious and life-threatening potential. Although Roche has added a warning to its product label for signs of depression, and suicidal ideation, this product is overprescribed for all forms of acne, including mild and moderate cases that have not been treated with alternative medications with less risk of depression and suicide. There is no contesting that this drug is effective at clearing up the most severe forms of acne, but the public must be informed of the proper limited indication for its use, because depression and suicide can follow in patients with no prior history of psychiatric symptoms or suicide attempts.http://tinyurl.com/8unn5n

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In the fields the bodies are burning as the war machine keeps on churning

Fluoridation is the lie that can NEVER be exposed. Think about the implications. Total loss of credibility for the AMA, FDA, ADA, CDC, EPA, CSIRO and all local governments that have approved fluoride as safe.

It would be the scandal of the millennium. Fluoridation is the easiest conspiracy to confirm and prove yet it is the most aggressively defended "health" initiate by all the above alphabet agencies.

A true understanding of how fluoride effects living organisms would cause a massive financial collapse in government, medicine and industry. This is why they will defend fluoridation to the death.

As I said it is still the easiest conspiracy to prove by looking up the info and that is why it is so important to continue speaking up about it even in the face of all the spin and lies.

Ironically, the fluoride debate wakes people up.

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That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.~Aldous Huxley

SHIJIAZHUANG, China, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Shivering in icy fog, a band of weary men waited outside a court in this north Chinese city on Friday to see what justice would come for their children, sick or dead after drinking milk tainted by a chemical.

The court is the site of trials of executives from the Sanlu dairy group and city officials, accused of allowing the sale of milk adulterated with melamine or for covering up the scandal. The toxic milk powder killed at least six children and sickened nearly 300,000 last year.

Parents, desperate to know the verdict from the closed-door proceedings, gathered outside after word spread of an impending verdict.

"So many of the affected parents hope for the death penalty," said Zhao Lianhai, father of a sick three year-old. Zhao gave up his job to campaign for redress.

Melamine, a cheap additive used to bamboozle quality checks, is a chemical used in plastics, flame retardants and cement. It was added to watered down or sub-standard milk because its high nitrogen levels mimicked protein in nutrition tests.

Sanlu failed to report cases of Chinese children developing kidney stones and other complications from drinking their milk months before the scandal broke in September.

The former general manager of the now shuttered firm, Tian Wenhua, faces charges of producing and selling fake or substandard products. The maximum sentence for this is life imprisonment, state media says, but one paper implied that if found guilty she could be executed.

For some parents, even that will not be enough.

Beside Zhou stood a 28 year-old farmer, with a hand-painted sign saying "Sanlu milk powder give me back my child". Hou Rongbo's son died on January 6, a week before his first birthday.

"He drank Sanlu milk from the day he was born, because his mother had problems producing breast milk," he told Reuters.

"He had blood in his urine at two months but the doctor said there was nothing wrong. He got flu in September and the news about Sanlu came out the same day we took him into hospital.

Checks showed he had kidney stones, the tell-tale symptom among poisoned children. But he also had leukaemia, so he is not listed among the Sanlu victims.

Hou is convinced the illnesses are related, or that the melamine at least worsened the leukaemia.

"My child is already dead, what do I have to lose?" he said, with tears in his eyes. The hoped for verdict in the closed-door case was not handed down on Friday, but Hou vowed to return.

INVESTIGATION, COMPENSATION

Zhao hopes to unite affected parents on websites with names like "poisoned milk.com", although it can be risky to take on the stability-obsessed Communist Party.

The parents of the first Chinese child killed by tainted milk formula have received $29,000 compensation, state media said on Friday, with the government hoping the payments and a trial will quell popular anger. But Zhou has collected files on six children he says died from the tainted milk who are not on the government list.

Many others are struggling to find treatment, he adds, although Beijing promised free treatment when the scandal broke.

"Everywhere we went they told us to go somewhere else, and now they say the period for free treatment has past,[/b]" said Zhou Jin, a migrant worker whose one-year-old daughter is still sick.

He has spent his meagre savings, borrowed from friends and family and says all he has been offered by the government is the small amount for "mildly affected" children.

"For her sickness the compensation is just 2,000 yuan, which won't even cover her medical expenses. I will not accept it."

There's been a big response to a call for Australian women to take part in a trial of a new contraceptive pill, said to restore libido and curtail menstrual pains.

The Sydney hospital which has invited women to take part in the six-month global trial received more than 100 calls in five hours early on Friday.

Dr Jinzhu Liu, of the Barbara Gross Research Unit at the Royal Hospital for Women at Randwick, said there was strong interest in the new formulation of the pill which promised to reduce "hormone withdrawal".

The withdrawal is said to occur in the seven-day placebo period built into the month-long cycle of conventional contraceptive drugs - the time in which women go through a menstrual cycle.

"Many women assume that they have to put up with headaches, pelvic pain," Dr Liu said of women using the conventional pill.

"Generally speaking, we're sure hormones are always the problem."

The newly formulated pill had only a two-day placebo period, and women still went through a menstrual cycle.

"If they have only two days free then the symptoms will be less that what they expected otherwise," Dr Liu said.

The new pill is not expected to be on the market for at least two years.

Women aged 18 to 50 who are using oral contraceptives and who believe it has caused a lack of libido are invited to take part in the trial, by calling 1800 f**k eugenics

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The Government is said to be on the point of announcing a programme of mass-vaccination of 11-year-old girls against a sexually-transmitted virus linked to cervical cancers.

"It is expected, in the very near future, that a universal programme for 11-year-old girls will be announced," says vaccine expert Dr Nikki Turner in a report for Auckland University's Immunisation Advisory Centre, of which she is director.

"The 11-year-old event is likely to be delivered by general practice and public health services within schools." Dr Turner is close to the Ministry of Health - her centre is contracted to it and she sits on the ministry's pandemic influenza committee - but she is not a ministry employee.

"We're just waiting to hear [about the vaccine]," she told the Herald.

The previous president of the Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Dr Kenneth Clark, said an announcement was widely expected soon.

"The proposals and the introduction of the vaccine are most welcome. Inevitably we would have preferred that it happened earlier."

Each year, cervical cancer is diagnosed in about 180 women and kills around 60.

Health Minister David Cunliffe was unavailable to comment and his spokeswoman said she was unable to confirm when an announcement would be made regarding human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination.

The ministry is negotiating with GlaxoSmithKline and CSL, which each supply a vaccine that targets strains of HPV associated with 70 per cent of cervical cancers.

Patients who wish to have CSL's Gardasil vaccine pay around $450 to receive the course of three injections.

The ministry had set a high priority on funding of HPV vaccination from next February, but it is understood the aim may now be to start making it available as early as September.

It has previously recommended vaccinating girls from the age of 11 or 13, with a catch-up for older girls up to 15, but the starting age was to be based on "acceptability" and a survey of parental attitudes was planned.

The vaccine is expected to confer the greatest protection if it is given before girls become sexually active as there is a high risk of HPV infection in the first years after starting to have sex.

Dr Turner said parental concerns had been expressed that giving the vaccine to adolescents might promote promiscuity or earlier sexual activity but there was no evidence for this.

"There is some evidence that education interventions can improve the level of acceptability in undecided parents. A UK study ... reported that 81 per cent of parents would probably, or definitely, have their child vaccinated."Email this story Print this story

The Government has confirmed it will spend $164.2 million over the next five years on a cervical cancer immunisation programme.

Prime Minister Helen Clark, Health Minister David Cunliffe and Associate Health Minister Steve Chadwick said the major programme would be offered free to 300,000 women aged 12 to 18 years from this September.

The human papillomavirus (HPV) programme had shown in trials to be highly effective against the most common causes of cervical cancer.

"This immunisation programme is expected to save around 30 lives a year," the ministers said in a statement.

"We also expect to see a reduction in the number of abnormal smear results, which means that fewer women will have to go through the stress of receiving an abnormal smear result, as well as of the extra tests, diagnoses, and invasive procedures which can follow such a result."

On top of the $164.2 million in new money, the Ministry of Health will spend up to another $13 million from within its baseline to the programme, making the total five year investment around $177 million.

Ms Chadwick said that it would still be important for those who get the vaccine to take part in the screening programme in future.

"While this vaccine protects against the most common causes of cervical cancer, it does not protect against all the causes," Ms Chadwick said.

From September 1, all young women born in 1990 and 1991 can make an appointment and begin HPV immunisation from their family doctor or practice nurse or health clinic.

From 2009, the vaccine will be incorporated into the routine immunisation schedule for year 8 girls (age 12-13).

The Health Ministry had put a high priority on funding the vaccine starting from next February, but today's announcement will bring that forward to this year.

Nikki Turner, a director of Auckland University's Immunisation Advisory Centre, said it was excellent news.

It was "a fantastic new vaccine" that had been used in many countries including the United States, the United Kingdon, Canada and Australia.

She said starting at 13, rather than 11, would make little difference, and would fit in well with a schools-based immunisation programme.

Britain's Labour Government has announced routine immunisation of all 12 and 13-year-old girls.

Green MP Sue Kedgley said parents needed to be properly informed about the potential risks of vaccination. Adverse reactions to vaccines included fainting, seizures, numbness and other problems had been reported overseas.

Prostate Cancer Foundation president Barry Young today welcomed the news but also called for more education and awareness campaigns on prostate cancer for which there was no vaccine.

He said men needed to find out if there was a history of the disease in their family and if there was should go to their doctor and get checked.

Health Minister David Cunliffe was asked today whether there would also be money for prostate cancer screening.

Mr Cunliffe said his health associate Damien O'Connor was leading a programme to develop new strategies for helping with men's health issues and an announcement would be made about that "in due course".

A Parliamentary committee last year rejected a call for a national prostate screening programme for men over 50 but said guidelines were needed to help men with symptoms.

CSL Biotherapies country manager Mike Taylor later confirmed the vaccine as Gardasil.

Mr Taylor said he believed the decision was a very positive step forward for the health of New Zealand women.

He pointed to the success of Gardasil in Australia as an example of the impact the vaccine could have.

CSL Biotherapies advised it would be able to deliver the vaccine in time for the immunisation programme to start in September this year.

(NaturalNews) Many of the pharmaceuticals consumed in the United States are made in India, where labor is cheap and environmental laws are lenient on powerful corporations. U.S. drug companies are exploiting this situation to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses of high-profit pharmaceuticals in India, where ingredients purchased for a few cents can be re-sold to U.S. health patients for hundreds of dollars (the markup on some drugs is literally over 500,000%).

Researchers were recently stunned to discover that 100 pounds of a powerful antibiotic called ciprofloxacin was being dumped into a local stream every day! That's a quantity of antibiotics that could treat an entire city of 90,000 people every day.

But that's not all: The same waterway contained an astonishing 21 pharmaceutical chemicals reports the Associated Press, some at levels that were 150 times the highest levels of contamination found in U.S. waterways. (And even the levels found in the U.S. were quite alarming.)

Big Pharma as a major chemical polluter

These findings are now added to the revelations of pharmaceutical contamination unveiled by the Associated Press last year, which found that the public water supplies in virtually all U.S. cities tested were contaminated with pharmaceutical chemicals.

What's emerging from these disturbing discoveries is a picture of Big Pharma as a global corporate polluter that's dumping chemicals into the world's sensitive waterways, polluting villages, cities and aquatic ecosystems around the world.

Under the Bush Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency outright refused to regulate pharmaceuticals as environmental hazards. With Obama in the White House, it remains to be seen whether the new administration will clamp down on pharmaceutical pollution.

Big Pharma now has something in common with Exxon, Cargill, Alcoa and Chevron: The outrageous pollution of the environment with toxic chemicals. But in many ways, Big Pharma's chemicals are far more dangerous. HRT drugs, for example, are toxic at parts per billion, and they're now being found in public water supplies around the world.

Municipal water treatment facilities, by the way, don't remove pharmaceutical chemicals from the water! Whatever HRT drugs, psychiatric drugs or other chemicals that exist in the water are passed right through the water treatment centers which unwisely add yet more chemicals (fluoride and chlorine, typically) to the toxic brew. Citizens drinking public water supplies in India, the U.K., Canada and the United States are now verifiably participating in a grand experiment involving the mass medication of the population with low levels of utterly untested pharmaceutical combinations.

How long will this be allowed to continue before the environmental protection authorities clamp down on pharmaceutical dumping?

So far, environmental regulators have done nothing to stop the dumping of drugs into public water supplies. This is true even in America, where hospitals routinely dispose of drugs by simply flushing them down the toilet (injecting them directly into the water supply consumed downstream).

Consumers also need to realize that the drugs you swallow are also environmental pollutants. Many drugs pass right through the human body unaltered, where they are flushed back into the water supply that's consumed downstream. (Yes, the toilet water from one city becomes the drinking water of the next city down the river. If you didn't know this, you have a LOT to learn about the water supply, and you probably won't like what you learn... especially if you live downstream...)

Big Pharma is contaminating our planet

It's becoming quite clear that the pharmaceutical industry is now directly contributing to the mass chemical contamination of our planet. By allowing factories to dump drugs into local waterways, by tolerating a "flush it" mentality at hospitals and pharmacies, and by drugging consumers with an endless brew of vaccines, medications and toxic substances such as chemotherapy agents, the pharmaceutical industry has "achieved" the distinction as a major world polluter.

Those who take pharmaceuticals are, in fact, directly contributing to the chemical contamination of the planet. That's why getting off medications is not only good for your health; it's also good for the planet.

You can't be "green" if you're taking medications. Consuming pharmaceuticals is simply incompatible with sustainable life on Earth. And the more drugs are manufactured and consumed, the worse this problem will become.

Let me put it this way: The survival of our planet depends on the demise of Big Pharma.

You can save the planet, or you can save Big Pharma. But not both.

Which would you rather have around for future generations? Living oceans, blue skies, clean water and healthy species? Or sterile oceans, dwindling aquatic life, mutant human babies and widespread cancer, infertility and shortened lifespans?

It's your choice: Mother Nature, or Big Pharma.

Centuries of the chemical destruction of our planet

The devastating long-term effects of this chemical contamination of our world's waterways have yet to be truly understood at all. The chemicals being dumped into our environment by Big Pharma today may pollute our planet for hundreds of years, destroying aquatic ecosystems, killing fish populations and causing widespread physical deformities across many species. Combine this with all the pesticide runoff already being used across the planet and it becomes quite clear that the human race has set itself on a path of self destruction.

How's that? Because humans don't exist in isolation from the natural world. When we destroy or disrupt the planet's delicate ecosystems through chemical contamination, we unleash a backlash of effects that put the entire human race in jeopardy: Outbreaks of infectious disease, plummeting fish stocks in ocean waters, rising risks of superbugs across the population and even long-term disruptions in the food supply due to pharmaceutical contamination of food crops and soil microorganisms. (Irrigation water being sprayed on crops is now also contaminated with pharmaceuticals...)

Stated bluntly, what's happening is that the pharmaceutical industry is poisoning our world -- and it's doing it for profit. While their factories in India are dumping millions of doses of antibiotics (and a brew of twenty other drugs) into the water supply each year, they're importing those drugs into the U.S. and selling them at monopoly prices to gullible consumers, all while pretending they're on some sort of humanitarian mission to help people.

The truth is that Big Pharma is committing crimes against Nature, and we'll all end up paying the price for allowing these crimes to continue under our watch. Every living thing in our world is interconnected: You can't poison the waterways with a toxic brew of dangerous chemicals and expect to be insulated from the effects of that forever.

Sometimes I stand back in sheer astonishment at how short-sighted human civilization truly is. Today our population demonstrates a striking lack of understanding about the web of life on our planet combined with an outright abandonment of ethics and morals. Companies (and many people) simply do whatever benefits them at the moment, regardless of the long-term consequences. The pharmaceutical industry exemplifies this destructive philosophy best, as it actually works to trap people in a cycle of disease treatment, all while raking in obscene profits for poisoning the people and the planet.

What a shameful business model. It's beyond shame, really. It's a crime. And it's time we put an end to these crimes against the People and against the planet.

Once again, I call for the arrest and prosecution of Big Pharma CEOs and executives for their role in planning and executing these crimes against humanity and Nature. In the U.S., this must be pursued by the Dept. of Justice, since the FDA, EPA and FTC remain in a tight conspiracy with the drug industry and will do nothing to bring their protected corporations to justice.

You can help support the effort to bring these criminals to justice (and end the chemical contamination of our planet by Big Pharma) by contacting your elected representatives (in any country) and letting them know how outraged you are about the widespread chemical pollution caused by the pharmaceutical industry.

Australian couples are flocking to a US fertility clinic that allows them to chose not only the sex of their child, but "cosmetic" features such as hair and eye colour. California-based Dr Jeffrey Steinberg says he has spoken to 14 Australian couples this month, as the latest controversial advances in the field of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) come online.

"It's an advance of the technology and whenever there's an advance you can see the good side of it and the bad side of it," says Dr Steinberg, of The Fertility Institutes.

"The good side of it is there are children born with albinism, they are unable to make eye pigment, they are vulnerable to ultra-violet light and a good number of them end up blind.

"We started out trying to help these albino children and in the process we're learning how to predict eye colour."

The controversial side, Dr Steinberg agrees, is that parents can now be told the likely hair and eye colour of a future child as they make a decision on which of their fertilised embryos will go to pregnancy.

Dr Steinberg has three clinics across the United States and one in Mexico, which now handle about 800 couples a year.

He says the majority are driven by concerns related to genetic illness, not gender, and this includes the 50 to 60 Australian couples he sees annually.

"I think we've got 14 new patients in January alone from Australia," he says.

"For example, I've just hung up with a patient from Australia who has Familial Hypercholesterolemia... which can be life threatening because they get early heart attacks.

"The father has it and they have two boys and one of the boys has it.

"What they want, number one, is a girl but they also want to make sure that girl does not carry that Hypercholesterolemia gene."

But the PGD process is not cheap.

A basic scan for major genetic illnesses costs $US20,000 ($A30,680) but Dr Steinberg says some couples, particularly from the oil rich gulf states, are were prepared to spend up to $US500,000 ($A767,000) to test for everything.

It works like this. Parents provide a number of fertilised embryos using the same techniques as in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

Cells are removed from the embryos, and advances now allow them to be scanned for 6,000 different genetic traits.

Genes determining sex, hair and eye colour can be identified, alongside any DNA red flags for diseases such as muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis and Down's Syndrome.

"Basically any genetic ailment, and there are thousands of them. We find the genetic error responsible for that in the embryo," Dr Steinberg says.

Only those embryos free of problem genetic markers and matching parental wishes, if stated, are then implanted in the mother.

Australian IVF clinics are allowed to make PGD assessments of an embryo for families with hereditary illness, but regulations prevent the selection embryos on the basis of preferred sex alone.

Dr Steinberg denies he's playing God, and says technology has handed parents the ability to ensure their child is as healthy as possible.

"To deny them the ability to do that when the technology is there is to me unethical," Dr Steinberg says.

"You can say eye colour and hair colour are not diseases, no they're not, and there is a cosmetic element to it, but we fix crooked noses all the time.

SYDNEY men will be among the first in the world to try a new contraceptive giving them control over their own fertility.

ANZAC Research Institute, at Concord Hospital, will begin testing a new two-monthly male contraceptive injection from today.

It works exactly like the female contraceptive pill by shutting down the reproductive function. The contraceptive tricks the brain into thinking it has already produced sperm, without affecting men's sexuality.

Earlier studies have found the injection works in 95 per cent of men who can become fully fertile again three months after they stop having the injections.

Sydney is one of 10 centres, including Melbourne's Prince Henry Institute, to take part in the worldwide trial.

Lead researcher Professor Rob McLachlan said the treatment kept men's testosterone levels normal while the progestin fooled the brain into not producing hormones needed to stimulate sperm production.

"But sexual function should not change because your level of testosterone in the blood remains the same," he said.

Four hundred couples are needed to join the 18-month trial. It will test the effectiveness of the injection as the only form of contraception.

SOUTH East Queensland residents rallied outside Parliament House on Tuesday to oppose the introduction of fluoridated and recycled water. The protest, organised by Queenslanders for Safe Water, Air and Food Inc, coincided with the first parliamentary session for the year.

The State Government has been adding fluoride to drinking supplies in most parts of South East Queensland since December in a bid to improve children's dental health. Redland City water is not yet fluoridated but the government is due to begin adding the substance at local water treatment plants from the end of 2009 as part of the statewide rollout.

Premier Anna Bligh's decision to introduce fluoride has won applause from the Australian Dental Association and Australian Medical Association, but continues to be condemned by anti-fluoride protesters who have raised serious concerns over health risks and the practice of "mass medication".

The Bligh Government also plans to add purified recycled water sourced from the sewerage network to Brisbane's Wivenhoe Dam if dam levels drop below 40 per cent - a process the government says is safe. Redland City residents continue to drink water from Leslie Harrison Dam and North Stradbroke Island, but a new pipeline now connects the area to the regional water grid.

Cleveland-based fluoride campaigner Bill Snoddy, who was unable to attend Tuesday's protest but has been collecting signatures for a petition in the Redlands, said he believed in freedom of choice. Mr Snoddy said some 500 or 600 people had already signed his petition, which calls on Redland City Council to stand up to the State Government on the fluoride issue on the behalf of residents.

The Cleveland resident said he had been encouraged by the positive response he had received to his petition in central Cleveland and predicted he may exceed his target of 5000 signatures.

"I just stand there and they come to me," Mr Snoddy said.

"Democracy is not dead, I hope."

Ms Bligh has previously described Queensland as the state with the worst teeth in the country and said fluoride was "backed by an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence and long-term use around the world".

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

THE Federal Government's health reform body has called for a commonwealth takeover of primary care but stopped short of recommending the same step for hospitals. The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, charged a year ago with delivering a blueprint to overhaul the healthcare system, released its interim report to the Rudd government on Monday.

The Federal Government has threatened to hold a referendum on whether or not Canberra should assume control of public hospitals if the states don't lift their game by the middle of the year. But it has not made clear exactly what the trigger point is for such action.

The commission's key recommendation is that the Federal Government assume total responsibility for primary care, that is health care provided outside the hospital system. But it stopped short of recommending similar action for the hospital system, only raising it as an option. A major advantage of a federal takeover of the nation's hospitals would be that it would resolve the "blame game" by making one government squarely accountable for all aspects of health care.

But such a significant change would also involve major risks, including a lack of accountability to voters, the commission says in its report.

"(This) option... potentially weakens community and electoral accountability and responsiveness by having only the national level of government involved in health and health care," the report said.

"Arguably, state and territory governments are more responsive to the views of their electorate than a national government that has to balance the interests of Perth or Launceston against those of Sydney or the Gold Coast."

A new tension between regional health authorities and the Federal Government about funding adequacy would arise if the commonwealth took over hospitals, the commission says.

It has also suggested the Federal Government consider allowing accommodation bonds to be paid for high-care places in nursing homes.

The Rudd government has repeatedly ruled out permitting accommodation bonds for high-care places.

* A regular report be produced that tracks Australia's progress as a nation in tackling health inequity; * A scheme be developed for universal access to preventative and restorative dental care and dentures, regardless of a person's ability to pay; * Delivery of wellness and health promotion programs by employers and private health insurers; * Establishment of a national health promotion and prevention agency to be responsible for leadership on 10-year health goals; * Performance payments for prevention and quality care; * Development of a electronic personal health record system; * A share of commonwealth hospital funding to the states to be tied to meeting or improving progress performance targets, payable as a bonus; * A youth-friendly community-based service to provide information on sexual health and mental disorders to be rolled out nationally; * Greater investment in mental health training for the primary care workforce with the training to be part of accreditation processes.

The commission will provide its final report to the government at the end of the year.

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

AUSTRALIANS could be asked to pay up to 14 per cent of their income for health services under a new social insurance scheme.The scheme will allow people to choose between multiple, competing health plans and providers. The option – similar to the compulsory superannuation levy - is one of three canvassed in a new interim report from a commission hand picked by the Prime Minister to shape the direction of the nation’s health system.

It would entirely cut the states and territories, which currently own and run the nation’s public hospitals, out of future health care and replace them with private or non-government groups that compete for custom by offering different insurance plans covering hospital, medical, drug and other health costs. A second reform option, which would set up commonwealth-funded regional health bodies, would also require the takeover of state hospitals and community health services.

The third option tweaks the existing system of split healthcare responsibilities to hold states and territories more directly accountable for the money they get from Canberra through new pay-for-service and pay-for-performance regimes. The interim report, launched at the National Press Club, throws down the gauntlet for change to Kevin Rudd, who will decide by the middle of the year whether to pursue a federal takeover of Australia’s hospitals.

"There is widespread dissatisfaction with the fragmentation of services on the ground and that the system doesn’t work together as a whole," the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission report said.

"This is often seen as being due to problems of governance and the 'blame game’."

All three models in the interim report are likely to involve an increase in health-specific taxes.

The NHHRC’s "social insurance" model, for example, proposes that the new health levy be set as high as 14 per cent of taxable income to cover all current government health costs.

"This is not an additional tax, rather it is just identifying the component of taxation that already goes to health and health care,’’ the NHHRC report said.

But even the least radical reform option involves a 0.75 per cent increase in the current Medicare levy, to extend universal coverage of health services to dental care.

Other ideas from the NHHRC report which are likely to generate controversy include: fresh consideration of accommodation bonds or similar charges for nursing home beds, the extension of Medicare rebates to nurse practitioners, and the establishment of a new national Aboriginal health body to close the life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

CÂNDIDO GODÓI, Brazil — High atop a hill behind his family’s home, Derli Grimm knelt and took a sip from a thin black tube leading from a natural spring.

Like so many in this farming town, populated almost entirely by German-speaking immigrants, Mr. Grimm, 19, believes that something in the water — a mysterious mineral, perhaps — is responsible for the town’s unusual concentration of twins.

“It can’t all be explained by genetics,” said Mr. Grimm, himself a twin.

Geneticists would like to disagree with him, but even they have no solid explanation for the 38 pairs of twins among about 80 families living in a one-and-a-half-square-mile area.

The mystery has persisted for decades, attracting international attention and inspiring books and investigations by geneticists. It is one reason locals are in no hurry to try to prove their water theory. They are too busy posing for journalists and marketing their town to tourists as the “twins capital of the world.”

Some researchers have suggested the darker possibility that Josef Mengele, the Nazi physician known as the Angel of Death, was involved. Mengele, residents say, roamed this region of southern Brazil, posing as a veterinarian, in the 1960s, about the time the twins explosion began. In a book published last year, an Argentine journalist, Jorge Camarasa, suggested that Mengele conducted experiments with women here that resulted in the higher rate of twins, many of them with blond hair and light-colored eyes. The experiments, locals said, may have involved new types of drugs and preparations, or even the artificial insemination Mengele claimed to know about, regarding cows and humans.

But neither Mr. Camarasa nor any other adherent of the Mengele theory has been able to prove the escaped Nazi conducted any experiments here. Mengele, who died in Brazil in 1979, was notorious for his often deadly experiments on twins at Auschwitz, ostensibly in an effort to produce a master Aryan race for Hitler.

“People who are speculating about Mengele are doing so to sell books,” said Paulo Sauthier, a historian who runs a museum here. “He studied the twins phenomenon in Germany, not here.”

A sign at the entrance to Cândido Godói says, “Garden City and Land of Twins.” More than 80 percent of its 6,700 residents are of German descent. They began arriving around World War I, lured by the prospect of cheap land, an agreeable farming climate and incentives from the Brazilian government to colonize the area.

The twins phenomenon is centered in the 300-person settlement of São Pedro, the part of Cândido Godói where the Grimms live. Mr. Sauthier, a twin, was born here in 1964. His mother, a Grimm, comes from one of the eight original families to settle São Pedro in 1918.

Even today they live a relatively isolated existence. Oxen still drag farm machinery. Residents speak a German dialect to one another.

It was in the early 1990s that the high proportion of twins was widely noticed. Soon, camera crews were rolling in from all over. Town leaders declared São Pedro to have the highest concentration of twins in the world. (A spokesman for Guinness World Records could not confirm that claim, saying Guinness did not keep track of the category.)

Today, residents relish the attention. Last year, at São Pedro’s sixth biennial twins party, they erected a statue of a woman holding a boy in one arm and his twin sister in the other, and installed a moat-like “fertility spring” that lights up at night.

Like many twins here, Fabiane and Tatiane Grimm, 22, have been posing for twins-seekers since they were babies. When a journalist and a photographer showed up unannounced, their mother ushered them from a barn into the house to shower before posing for pictures.

“It’s not too much of a mystery to me,” said Fabiane, whose family has five pairs of twins. “My brother married his third cousin. There are lots of cases like that, people marrying their cousins or other close family members.”

But to some, the mystery remains. A decade ago, Anencir Flores da Silva, a town doctor and former mayor of Cândido Godói, set out to solve it, and he has since interviewed more than 100 people. He said he believed that people were holding back information about Mengele.

“In a region full of Nazis, there are some that remain silent, who are scared,” Dr. da Silva said. “It is important that we discover the truth.”

A book he helped write about the twins, published in 2007, tells of several visits Mengele made to the region, using false names.

“I am convinced that Mengele was in the region and was observing the twins phenomenon,” Dr. da Silva said. He said a man identifying himself as Rudolf Weiss attended women with varicose veins and sometimes performed dental work. And some residents told him a German man was driving from home to home in a mobile laboratory, collecting samples and ministering to women.

Mr. Sauthier, the historian, said that the assertions lacked proof and that the German community did not deserve to be associated with “a criminal like Mengele.”

“There are no Nazi sympathizers in this region,” he said, although he acknowledged a historical interest in Nazi artifacts, including a 1937 metal milk can with a swastika in his museum and a 1936 photo of schoolchildren in Cândido Godói holding swastika flags that was included in Dr. da Silva’s book.

Geneticists say the most likely explanation for the twins is genetic isolation and inbreeding. Ursula Matte, a geneticist in Porto Alegre, found that from 1990 to 1994, 10 percent of the births in São Pedro were twins, compared with 1.8 percent for the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

There was no evidence of the use of contraceptives or fertility drugs among the women, nor of any genetic mixing with people of African origin, who have higher twinning rates than caucasians, Dr. Matte said. But the rate of identical twins here, at 47 percent of all twin births, is far higher than the 30 percent that is expected in the general population, she found.

While identical twins are generally thought to occur randomly in the population, independent of genetic factors, the remarkable discrepancy in the frequency of identical twins has led Dr. Matte to conclude that Sao Pedro is an "isolated phenomenon" where unknown genetic factors must be at work.

So the speculation continues.

Mr. Sauthier said he believed private water sources like the one Derli Grimm enjoys contain a mineral that affects ovulation. “To this day, no one has tested that water,” he said, noting that in the past decade the town switched to underground well water, a possible explanation for a recent decline in twin births.

Testing the spring sources would be expensive and, Dr. Matte said, would require some hypothesis about what the research was looking for. She doubts the town will ever push seriously to do a study. “They like to maintain the mystery,” she said.

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

THE decision to add fluoride to Queensland's drinking water has come back to bite Premier Anna Bligh on day five of the election campaign. Taking calls on Rockhampton radio station 4RO on Friday, Ms Bligh took a barrage of criticism on health issues, particularly fluoridation. One caller, Dan, said the government had imposed huge changes on central Queensland, including fluoridation of water and amalgamating local councils, that should have been the subject of a referendum.

"You say to people trust me, and we've had the experience of forced amalgamations, we've had forced fluoride ... and the other thing is daylight savings," Dan said.

"You've got to give the people a choice."

Ms Bligh said the fluoride issue had been debated in Queensland for a long time.

"Every public survey conducted by any reputable body in Queensland over the last, I think, five or more years has shown overwhelming support for fluoride," she said.

"I thought it was time to get on and do it so that our children had the benefit of one of the most beneficial public health initiatives that's enjoyed in all other parts of Australia."

Another caller, Kevvy, said he had to wait five months for an appointment to see a specialist about his cataracts, and asked whether Queensland Health Minister Stephen Robertson would keep his portfolio if Labor won the election. Mr Robertson is again under pressure over Queensland Health's handling of the case of a nurse raped in the Torres Strait, with a report on the matter released this week.

"Why is the health department in such disarray and is the current minister going to be the minister of health if you are re-elected?" he asked.

Ms Bligh said it would be inappropriate to speculate about cabinet positions after the election, but she understood the need for renewal.

"We'll certainly be looking at all of that after the 21st of March," she said.

Ms Bligh will campaign in Rockhampton on Friday, a safe Labor seat held by Housing Minister Robert Schwarten.

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

This article states "There've been safety concerns, too - claims that Gardasil has caused serious illness and even death - although no causal link has been proven." This is not true. For example, if a girl takes 6 steps after a shot, then collapses and has a grand mal seizure not long afterwards, it is safe to assume it was the vaccine that caused it and this kind of reaction is being reported following vaccination with Gardasil. Refer:http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08070316.html

Tapu Misa: When a shot in the arm's no silver bulletBy Tapu Misahttp://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10559401March 2nd 2009The TV advertising campaign for the "anti-cancer vaccine" Gardasil makes it look like a no-brainer. "It's your choice," the ads say about the vaccine that's now being offered free in our schools to girls aged from 12 to 18. But it sounds more like no choice. What caring parent wouldn't choose to vaccinate her daughter from a potentially deadly cancer when three shots are "all it takes to protect her from cervical cancer".

You'd have to be a pretty bad mother not to encourage your daughter to get vaccinated.

There's no doubting the persuasive power of the marketing campaign that was launched here in early 2007, not long after Medsafe had approved Gardasil's use in New Zealand.

In the US, a slick advertising campaign funded by Merck, Gardasil's maker, was unleashed on American mothers and teenage girls even before the FDA had fast-tracked its approval of the vaccine. The ads stressed the link between the common virus, HPV, and cervical cancer - exaggerating the threat of girls getting what the National Institute of Health refers to as "a rare disease". Award-winning TV ads since then have made vaccination seem like the latest must-have accessory no American girl can live without.

And maybe it is. Information put out by the Ministry of Health says Gardasil is safe, that it protects against 70 per cent of cervical cancers, and that it's been licensed for use in over 100 countries around the world including Australia, the US, Canada and the UK.

It's also very expensive. The immunisation programme announced by the previous Government - two months before the last election - was costed at $177 million over the next five years, with an ongoing price tag of $16 million a year.

To say that this money might be better spent elsewhere - say, in treating actual cancers and other diseases - would seem heartless when estimates put the number of lives saved at around 30 a year.

But as women's health advocate Lynda Williams has pointed out, it will take 20 years before we know for sure if Gardasil is the life-saving "anti-cancer vaccine" it's been hyped up to be, because it takes around 15 years for cervical cancer to develop - and the trials weren't long enough to tell us that. There's no guarantee, either, that the vaccine will provide immunity for longer than five years, which means expensive booster shots may be needed.

Certainly, the vaccine has already been a lifesaver for Merck, which needed an infusion after it was forced to withdraw its anti-arthritis drug Vioxx from the market. Merck now faces 11,500 lawsuits after Vioxx - which had also been fast-tracked by the FDA - was found to increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

A cynic might see a link between this and the drug company's aggressive lobbying to make Gardasil mandatory for girls in the US. The New York Times reported last year that 24 states had put forward proposals requiring the vaccine for girls in middle school. Vaccination is now a requirement of school entry in Virginia, but a similar move was overturned by the Texas legislature after it was found that Merck had hired the Texas governor's chief of staff as a lobbyist, and made financial contributions to the governor.

As a 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal observed: "Mandatory vaccination across the US would make an automatic blockbuster for Merck at a time when the patents on some of its bestselling drugs are expiring and it's desperate to replace their revenue streams."

The HPV virus that causes 99 per cent of cervical cancers is transmitted through sexual contact. The vast majority of sexually active women can expect to be infected by HPV at some time in their lives, but most of these infections clear up on their own. Only a small proportion will lead to cancer. Trials show that Gardasil is effective against the two types of HPV that cause up to 70 per cent of all cervical cancers.

But as an August 2008 editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine points out, there are reasons for caution. "The bad news is that the overall effect of the vaccines on cervical cancer remains unknown ... the real impact of HPV vaccination ... will not be observable for decades." In other words, just because Gardasil has been shown to be highly successful in preventing pre-cancerous lesions caused by HPV doesn't mean that the vaccine will ultimately prevent cervical cancer and death.

Indeed, a number of "critical questions remained unanswered". For instance, since most HPV infections are easily cleared by the immune system, how would vaccination affect natural immunity against HPV, and with what implications? How long would protection last? How would the vaccine affect pre-adolescent girls, given that the clinical studies didn't include girls under 16?

And might the suppression of HPV16 and HPV18, the two types of HPV targeted by Gardasil, make room for other cancer-causing strains to emerge in their place? Published reports of trials suggest just such a trend.There've been safety concerns, too - claims that Gardasil has caused serious illness and even death - although no causal link has been proven.

Of concern, too, is the effect mass vaccination will have on what is still the most effective weapon against cervical cancer: prevention, not through a vaccine, which may head off only 70 per cent of cancers, but through regular cervical smears with a proven 90 per cent success rate.

Gardasil doesn't do away with the need for the smears, and it doesn't protect for life. But the false sense of security it gives girls may well cost them their lives.

Letter to the Editor about the above article:Dear Editor,The article about Gardasil (NZHerald 2/3/09) served to brainwash the public about this dangerous vaccine as it failed to mention the multitude of serious adverse events associated with it, including the evidence that shows it may increase the risk of precancerous cervical lesions by an alarming 44.6 percent in some women.This information, which is in the public arena, was uncovered by Judicial Watch, (JW), the public watchdog group, in US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) documents through the Freedom of Information Act. Tom Fitton of JW described what he read as “a catalogue of horrors” and a JW report states: “The possibility that Gardasil could make HPV infections worse is very serious, and a matter of concern with both critics of the vaccine and the FDA.” The problem is mentioned by Merck also on page 14 of the Gardasil insert.Thus, while the article states “no causal link has been proven...” to show Gardasil is responsible for adverse events, evidence indicates otherwise. The Judicial Watch reports reveal there is already enough evidence to show that this vaccine may be far more dangerous to the health of women than doing nothing at all.Clare Swinney

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To be persuasive, we must be believable,To be believable, we must be credible,To be credible, we must be truthful.- Edward R. Murrow

A University of Scranton alumns, Kiel has travelled to 13 of the 14 Asia Pacific countries, and plans to travel to Vietnam in the near future. She has travelled to these countries to try to sell and distribute the vaccine to women in need.

(Media-Newswire.com) - Joan Kuzmack Kiel strongly urged for the distribution of the HPV vaccination to women in the Asia Pacific countries during her speech at the PNC Breakfast on Tuesday morning., Feb. 24, in The Rose Room of Brennan Hall.

A University of Scranton alumns, Kiel has travelled to 13 of the 14 Asia Pacific countries, and plans to travel to Vietnam in the near future. She has travelled to these countries to try to sell and distribute the vaccine to women in need.

HPV, or Human Papillomavirus, when found in women, often becomes cervical cancer. The vaccine is supposed to prevent the patient from ever contracting HPV. In cases where the vaccine is delivered too late, HPV often turns into cancer.

“In the world, 450 women are dying each day from cervical cancer, and 80% of that number comes from women in developing countries like India and China where’s there’s not access to medicine,” said Kiel. She also stated that cervical cancer is the number two killer of women in the world.

Kiel stressed using the vaccine as early as possible to prevent HPV from ever taking hold, since the vaccine is not as effective after infection occurs.

“It can take up to 20 years for HPV to evolve into cervical cancer,” said Kiel. “In the US, we have pap screening in place to catch HPV in its developing stages. Unfortunately, in developing countries, pap screening is not in place. We do not find the disease until it’s in a much later stage, and that can be very damaging.”

Kiel said that the problem is that doctors do not understand why the vaccine should be administered so early. Most women want to receive the vaccine when they are in their 20’s. “Pediatricians don’t understand the disease,” said Kiel. “They understand the vaccination but they don’t understand why it’s so important to vaccinate early.”

She recommended that girls should be vaccinated around ages 12 or 13. “The greatest medical need is for younger patients,” said Kiel. “The need for a vaccine decreases over time because the vaccine doesn’t offer a benefit once you become infected.”

Kiel is the director of Asia Pacific Marketing, Vaccines for Merck & Co., Inc. She graduated from The University of Scranton in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and received her MBA with a marketing concentration from Villanova University.

The PNC Breakfast is a lecture series at The University of Scranton that brings together members of the civic and business community to hear guest speakers address topics of regional, national and international interest. PNC Bank is the corporate sponsor.

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

Czech newspapers are questioning if the shocking discovery of vaccines contaminated with the deadly avian flu virus which were distributed to 18 countries by the American company Baxter were part of a conspiracy to provoke a pandemic.

The claim holds weight because, according to the very laboratory protocols that are routine for vaccine makers, mixing a live virus biological weapon with vaccine material by accident is virtually impossible.

“The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses,” reports the Canadian Press.

Baxter flu vaccines contaminated with H5N1 - otherwise known as the human form of avian flu, one of the most deadly biological weapons on earth with a 60% kill rate - were received by labs in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Slovenia.

Initially, Baxter attempted to stonewall questions by invoking “trade secrets” and refused to reveal how the vaccines were contaminated with H5N1. After increased pressure they then claimed that pure H5N1 batches were sent by accident. This was seemingly an attempt to quickly change the story and hide the fact that the accidental contamination of a vaccine with a deadly biological agent like avian flu is virtually impossible and the only way it could have happened was by wilful gross criminal negligence.

According to a compiled translation from Czech newspaper stories, the media over there is asking tough questions about whether the contamination was part of a deliberate attempt to start a pandemic.

“Was this just a criminal negligence or it was an attempt to provoke pandemia using vaccination against flu to spread the disease - as happened with the anti-B hepatitis vaccination with vaccines containing the HIV virus in US? - and then cash for the vaccines against H5N1 which Baxter develops? How could on Earth a virus as H5N1 come to the ordinary flu vaccines? Don’t they follow even basic precautions in the american pharma companies?” states the translation.

The fact that Baxter mixed the deadly H5N1 virus with a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses is the smoking gun. The H5N1 virus on its own has killed hundreds of people, but it is less airborne and more restricted in the ease with which it can spread. However, when combined with seasonal flu viruses, which as everyone knows are super-airborne and easily spread, the effect is a potent, super-airbone, super deadly biological weapon.

As the Canadian Press article explains, “While H5N1 doesn’t easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.”

There can be little doubt therefore that this was a deliberate attempt to weaponize the H5N1 virus to its most potent extreme and distribute it via conventional flu vaccines to the population who would then infect others to a devastating degree as the disease went airborne.

The Canadian Press article states, “That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created,” but then claims that there is no evidence that this is what Baxter were doing, despite there being no clear explanation as to why Baxter has samples of the live avian flu virus on its premises in the first place.

However, to reiterate, the key aspect of this story is that it is virtually impossible for live avian flu virus to find its way into a vaccine by “accident”.

As health expert Mike Adams points out, “The shocking answer is that this couldn’t have been an accident. Why? Because Baxter International adheres to something called BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) - a set of laboratory safety protocols that prevent the cross-contamination of materials.”

“Laboratory personnel have specific training in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents, and are supervised by competent scientists who are experienced in working with these agents. This is considered a neutral or warm zone. All procedures involving the manipulation of infectious materials are conducted within biological safety cabinets or other physical containment devices, or by personnel wearing appropriate personal protective clothing and equipment. The laboratory has special engineering and design features.”

Under the BSL3 code of conduct, it is impossible for live avian flu viruses to contaminate production vaccine materials that are shipped out to vendors around the world.

This leaves only two possibilities that explain these events:

Possibility #1: Baxter isn’t following BSL3 safety guidelines or is so sloppy in following them that it can make monumental mistakes that threaten the safety of the entire human race. And if that’s the case, then why are we injecting our children with vaccines made from Baxter’s materials?

Possibility #2: A rogue employee (or an evil plot from the top management) is present at Baxter, whereby live avian flu viruses were intentionally placed into the vaccine materials in the hope that such materials might be injected into humans and set off a global bird flu pandemic.

Spreading bird flu would create an instantaneous surge of demand for bird flu vaccines. The profits that vaccine companies such as Baxter International could reap out of such a panic are astronomical.

In addition, as we have previously reported, those that have a stake in the Tamiflu vaccine include top globalists and BIlderberg members like George Shultz, Lodewijk J.R. de Vink and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Authorities in both Europe and the U.S. have openly detailed plans for martial law, quarantine and internment should a bird flu pandemic occur.

The other motivation, as we have exhaustively documented on this website for years, is the fact that elites throughout history have openly stated that they want to see a world population reduction of around 80 per cent. Shocking stories like this take the plausibility of that narrative out of the realms of conspiracy theory and into the dangerous reality of conspiracy fact.

“Baxter is acting a whole lot like a biological terrorism organization these days, sending deadly viral samples around the world. If you mail an envelope full of anthrax to your Senator, you get arrested as a terrorist. So why is Baxter — which mailed samples of a far more deadly viral strain to labs around the world — getting away with saying, essentially, “Oops?”, Adams concludes.

This is not the first time that vaccine companies have been caught distributing vaccines contaminated with deadly viruses.

In 2006 it was revealed that Bayer Corporation had discovered that their injection drug, which was used by hemophiliacs, was contaminated with the HIV virus. Internal documents prove that after they positively knew that the drug was contaminated, they took it off the U.S. market only to dump it on the European, Asian and Latin American markets, knowingly exposing thousands, most of them children, to the live HIV virus. Government officials in France went to prison for allowing the drug to be distributed. The documents show that the FDA colluded with Bayer to cover-up the scandal and allowed the deadly drug to be distributed globally. No Bayer executives ever faced arrest or prosecution in the United States.

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

Media Release from Merilyn Haines , spokesperson for Queenslanders For Safe Water, Air and Food and Independent candidate for South Brisbane.

On the 15th October 2008 at the Q2 Forum held at Logan University, Premier Anna Bligh was challenged on misinformation that has been put out by Queensland Health on the status of Queensland children’s oral health.

The Premier was also challenged why she and Queensland Health were claiming water fluoridation was safe, despite no health and safety studies ever being done in Australia and why she had removed all liability from harm in the Legislation that forced fluoridation on Queenslanders. The following document, as scanned and later reported by the Brisbane Times, was read out aloud in front of at least 200 people and the Premier asked to sign a personal guarantee.

Amazingly, for a Politician who is normally very cunning , Anna Bligh signed the document , indicating that she must NOT have done any personal research on water fluoridation before she forced it on 4 million Queenslanders. This was a very foolish action and could prove to be a significant problem for her in the future.

In five years time, many children who have been born after fluoride was forced into Queensland’s water supplies will start exhibiting mild Dental Fluorosis ( marked or pitted tooth enamel ) as they start losing their baby teeth and start getting their permanent teeth. Data from South Australian and West Australian studies indicate 30 % of children will have mild Dental Fluorosis in their permanent teeth and that one to two children per hundred will have more severe Dental Fluorosis requiring expensive “cosmetic” dentistry to disguise.

In the future, parents of Queensland children requiring dental work to disguise marked Dental Fluorosis may now be able to claim compensation directly from Anna Bligh because of the Bligh guarantee document.

Dental Fluorosis is just one adverse effect of water fluoridation; reduction of Thyroid activity, allergies and hypersensitivity ( exhibited as skin rashes, migraines, joint pain and abdominal pain ), increased rates of hip fractures with long term consumption, and increased storage of fluoride in the bones of kidney impaired people ( many Diabetics ) and increased risk of Osteosarcoma bone cancer in boys are other adverse health effects. People suffering from these health effects may also be able to claim compensation, although this will not be as straightforward as Dental Fluorosis claims.

Any election candidate who promotes fluoridation and if elected, wishes to continue forced fluoridation should take 5 minutes to Google “fluoride”. We recommend starting with www.fluoridealert.org and search “ Fluorosis”

A new fluoride and recycled water brochure is now available for viewing and printing from www.qawf.org and from www.merilynhaines.org. We urge candidates to consider this information.

Anna Bligh has signed a personal guarantee that could cost the Premier her personal assets in a court batttle if people become sick from water flouridation, a Brisbane lawyer said.

This week, Ms Bligh confirmed she had signed a legal document in which she accepts full personal liability for flouridation and promises to provide financial compensation in the event that it causes adverse health affects.

Flouride was introduced into the state's water supply in December. At the time, Health Minister Stephen Robertson was presented with two petitions totalling 6000 signatures against the move, which will see a final fluoride concentration of 0.6 parts per million.

The document, which Ms Bligh signed on October 15 at a community meeting, was first published in the Hinterland Voice independent newspaper.

"The Premier signed the document as a demonstration of her comittment to fluoridation," the Premier's spokeswoman said.

"She did not make this decision lightly and stands by it."

But the promise could provide a loophole for anti-flouridation activists to take legal action over the roll-out of fluoride.

Mark O'Connor, a compensation specialist and partner at Brisbane law firm Bennett & Philp, said state laws prevent residents from taking any action against water authorities.

However, he said the Premier's pledge means she could be liable as a private citizen, although it would be difficult to establish a case against her.

"You'd have to provide medical evidence the condition has been caused by consumption of fluoridated water and not another factor," Mr O'Connor explained.

He said anyone bringing a case against Ms Bligh would have to show they had changed their behaviour on the basis of the promise.

"It's an unsual case. I've never seen this done before," he said.

"It would appear she is giving a personal guarantee, rather than a guarantee on behalf of the Government.

"Any claim would therefore be against Ms Bligh's own assets.

"I doubt she would put her assets at risk, unless she was sure that fluoride wouldn't cause disease."

At an anti-fluoridation rally on Tuesday, Queenslanders Against Water Fluoridation spokeswoman Jeanie Ryan said the group was still calling on Ms Bligh to end fluoridation because of its health effects.

An article published in the respected medical journal Lancet said fluoride can cause neurotoxicity in laboratory animals, but hasn't yet been proven to be toxic to humans.

Studies in rural communities in China have found high fluoride concentrations in well water may cause skeletal abnormalities and affect intelligence.

Australian Dental Association Queensland branch president, Rockhampton dentist Greg Moore, said there could be a 20-40 per cent reduction in tooth decay as a result of fluoridated water.

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

HALTING the world's rocketing population growth is the key to solving global warming -- a solution that has been ignored or overlooked by leading climate change advocates.

That was the warning yesterday from an Australian health expert, who said UN forecasts of a global population of more than 9 billion people by 2050 spelt disaster for the world's ecology.

Roger Short, honorary professor at the University of Melbourne's faculty of medicine, nursing and health sciences, told a conference in Sydney yesterday that government-commissioned reviews -- such as the Stern report in Britain and Australia's Garnaut report -- had not even mentioned the word "population". Even the film by former US vice-president Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, had failed to focus on the dangers posed by unsustainable population growth.

"Global warming is a direct result of human activity," Professor Short told The Weekend Australian.

"The more people there are, the worse the global warming threat gets.

"So we have got to do everything we can to control human population growth.

"We haven't given the women of the world freedom from the tyranny -- and I do mean tyranny -- of unwanted fertility.

"If we could restore that freedom to women, the world could breathe a lot easier and we could look forward to the future because women would sort out the future for us."

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WeAreChange BrisbaneI hold personal views, beliefs and opinions that do not necessarily reflect the beliefs and opinions of WeAreChange Brisbane as a whole.

First of I want for you to clarify your position on this issue: Do you support population control and / or population reduction?

I'm of the view nature-if under the supposed strain of 9 billion people-will balance itself out. 'Mother nature' as it is called isn't entirely stupid, it's roughly 4 Billion years old?

Here are some quotes, please tell me if you agree / disagree with them:

“It would seem that men and women need a common motivation, namely a common adversary, to organize and act together in the vacuum such as motivation seemed to have ceased to exist or have yet to be found. The need for enemies seems to be a common historical factor…Bring the divided nation together to face an outside enemy, either a real one or else one INVENTED for the purpose…

Democracy will be made to seem responsible for the lagging economy, the scarcity and uncertainties. The very concept of democracy could then be brought into question and allow for the seizure of power.

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. The real enemy then is humanity itself.” - “The First Global Revolution” (1991) published by the Club of Rome.

“The Aids epidemic, rather than being a scourge, is a welcome development in the inevitable reduction of human population… If [it] didn’t exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent [it].” Dave Foreman - Earth First!

"We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren't enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage." New Age writer, Sam Keen

"There is a single theme behind all our work-we must reduce population levels. Either they [governments] do it our way, through nice clean methods or they will get the kind of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran, or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it. The professionals aren't interested in lowering population for humanitarian reasons. That sounds nice. We look at resources and environmental constraints. We look at our strategic needs, and we say that this or that must lower its population-or else we will have trouble."Thomas Ferguson - Latin American case officer for the State Department's Office of Population Affairs

"No woman shall have the legal right to bear a child… without a permit for parenthood." - Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) in her proposed The American Baby Code, intended to become law.

"Eugenics is … the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems." - Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.

"There is NO DENYING the natural world would be a better place without people - ALL people! Not a selective bunch. Get it straight." -Rebecca Calisi, student of Eric Pianka

"In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it." - Jacques Cousteau, 1991 UNESCO courier

“I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing… War… has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full… The state of affairs might be somewhat unpleasant, but what of that? Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people’s… There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority…” - Bertrand Russell, THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY 1953

The Georgia Guidestones

MAINTAIN HUMANITY UNDER 500,000,000 IN PERPETUAL BALANCE WITH NATURE

GUIDE REPRODUCTION WISELY —

IMPROVING FITNESS AND DIVERSITY

UNITE HUMANITY WITH A LIVING NEW LANGUAGE

RULE PASSION — FAITH — TRADITION AND ALL THINGS WITH TEMPERED REASON

PROTECT PEOPLE AND NATIONS WITH FAIR LAWS AND JUST COURTS

LET ALL NATIONS RULE INTERNALLY RESOLVING EXTERNAL DISPUTES IN A WORLD COURT

AVOID PETTY LAWS AND USELESS OFFICIALS

BALANCE PERSONAL RIGHTS WITH SOCIAL DUTIES.

PRIZE TRUTH — BEAUTY — LOVE — SEEKING HARMONY WITH THE INFINITE

BE NOT A CANCER ON THE EARTH — LEAVE ROOM FOR NATURE — LEAVE ROOM FOR NATURE

Finally I urge you to view these documents & documentaries. Please keep an open mind.

The basic thesis of the memorandum was that population growth in the least developed countries (LDCs) is a concern to U.S. national security, because it would tend to risk civil unrest and political instability in countries that had a high potential for economic development.

The report advocates the promotion of contraception and other population reduction measures. It also raises the question of whether the U.S. should consider preferential allocation of surplus food supplies to states that are deemed constructive in use of population control measures. The report advises, "In these sensitive relations, however, it is important in style as well as substance to avoid the appearance of coercion."

Well done! Some of the worst threats to the environment are probably a product of the Military Industrial Complex. The DU, and other types of nuclear weapons. If they were that worried about the environment, why not let the public use the clean forms of energy production that are being suppressed too. The documentary Free Energy: The Race to Zero Point shows are few of those. And why force GMOs on populations when that form of crop production/spraying damages the environment.

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To be persuasive, we must be believable,To be believable, we must be credible,To be credible, we must be truthful.- Edward R. Murrow

At breathingearth.net you will find a lovely simulation of the aspects of the life-cycle on Earth, including global birth and death rates, as well as CO2 emissions.

I love the organic sound effect that accompanies the visuals. And having the birth and death rates pointed out in such an obvious way really was quite shocking to me.

It indicates an exploding population, with the continuous counter on the site showing births going up at twice the rate of deaths. Given global concerns about CO2 emissions, the figure underneath those is somewhat worrying too.

You can find out the details for individual countries by hovering the mouse over them.

The aim of this site is to raise awareness of environmental issues. You can find out at the bottom of the site about the data's origin and how you can make a difference to the planet.

= too many humans producing too much co2 !

and while i'm on about the farce of global warming/climate change ie- the weather

Alex should have David Bellamy on as a guest ! everyone thinks he's dead... he's not, and he is totally against the bbc/media/government agenda. as he stated recently in the north of england - the romans used to have vineyards here 2000 years ago. nuff said.

CANBERRA, March 10 (Reuters) - Australia's government on Tuesday scrapped a ban preventing overseas aid being used for abortion advice, following a recent U.S. decision to overturn similar prohibitions.

The ban was put in place in 1996 by Australia's previous conservative government and prevented overseas aid funding being used for anything involving termination of a pregnancy.

"This is a difficult issue and the government recognises that there are strong views, firmly held, on all sides. Avoiding terminations through family planning services and advice will continue to be the focus of Australian-funded activities," Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said in a statement.

Australian and international aid agencies would be able to choose what services they deliver in line with their own philosophies, but Smith said he hoped the estimated 42 million terminations performed globally each year could be reduced.

Australia would spend an additional $9.5 million over the next four years on family planning and reproductive health activities to help reduce maternal deaths, he said

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PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has voiced his own reservations about overturning the ban on Australian foreign aid being used to support family planning programs which include abortion.

Mr Rudd told a Labor caucus meeting this morning that he had "long-standing conservative views" about the issue and was personally not in support of the policy change.

Only one other caucus member, Queensland senator John Hogg, spoke on behalf of a number of colleagues who had "strong views" against overturning the policy, but who appreciated there had been a genuine debate before Foreign Minister Stephen Smith announced the decision.

Mr Rudd told caucus he recognised there was a clear majority among Labor MPs to overturn the ban introduced by the Howard Government to appease former Tasmanian independent senator Brian Harradine.

He told caucus he supported the millennium development goals aimed at reducing world poverty.

Mr Rudd thanked the caucus for its "mature" debate on the issue.

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Some types of genital HPVs can cause cauliflower-shaped warts on or around the genitals and anus of both men and women. In women, warts may also appear on the cervix and vagina. This type of "genital wart" is known as condyloma acuminatum and is most often caused by HPV-6 or HPV-11. Because these genital warts rarely grow into cancer, HPV-6 and HPV-11 are called "low-risk" viruses. These low-risk types can also cause low-grade changes in the cells of the cervix that do not develop into cancer.

High-risk HPV types

Other genital type HPVs have been linked with genital or anal cancers in both men and women. These types are called "high-risk" because they can cause cancer. They also cause low-grade and high-grade changes in the cells of the cervix and pre-cancers. Doctors worry more about the high-grade changes and pre-cancers, because they are more likely to grow into cancers...

In 90% of cases, the body's immune system clears the HPV infection within 2 years. This is true of both high-risk and low-risk HPV types.

Genetic testing is here to stay, it would seem. It has become increasingly common in the US, for example, and this report in the Sydney Morning Herald comments on some cases in Australia where people have been refused life insurance because of medical conditions revealed by genetic testing. In one case, a woman was refused insurance due to a genetic predisposition to cancer.

The number of cases where people have been refused insurance on the basis of genetic testing is small. However, as technology improves and the rate of take up by insurers increases, presumably this could rise significantly.

There is also potential for this to be used in the employment field. HumGen a website which contains information on the ethical, legal, and social issues of human genetics, points out that a genetic condition could make it more difficult to carry out certain tasks, could require treatments that cause a prolonged absence from work, or could cause an employee to become disabled before retirement. An employee's genetic make-up can also increase their susceptibility to contracting disease upon contact with certain substances present in the workplace. Further, as with other medical conditions, genetic conditions could be a health and safety issue (for example, heavy machine operators with epilepsy).

But is it reasonable to allow employers to make use of genetic information to rule out candidates based on these sorts of concerns? Australia's Human Rights Commissioner has called it unlawful discrimination. In New Zealand, to refuse a job based on a genetic condition may well be disability discrimination, although the wording of the definition of "disability" leaves plenty of room for argument. In the US, concern about the issue has already resulted in legislation, in the form of the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act 2008, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of genetic information by insurers and employers (this newsletter from the US firm Fox Rothschild contains a useful summary). http://www.foxrothschild.com/Newsstand/News.aspx?id=9278

It seems to me that this sort of testing opens up a can of worms. You can argue that an employer should have access to information about a genetic condition that presents a genuine health and safety risk, and perhaps testing should be allowed on that sort of limited basis. But in other situations where there is no risk to staff or visitors, such as the mere possibility of absence from work some time in the future, it becomes more difficult to support.

Greg Cain

Greg Cain is an employment lawyer at Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.

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To be persuasive, we must be believable,To be believable, we must be credible,To be credible, we must be truthful.- Edward R. Murrow

Thanks. It is very worrying the extent to which this vaccine is being whitewashed in NZ. A friend called up a free local newspaper called The Whangarei Report to ask who wrote a complimentary article about Gardasil that was in the paper a few weeks ago and the editor said it had come from the vaccine manufacturer.Also, the NZ Immunisation Advisory Centre is misleading the public, as these three posts show. Refer: NZ’s Immunisation Advisory Centre Claims Gardasil Deaths Mainly “Motor Vehicle Accidents”http://uncensored.co.nz/2009/02/26/nzs-immunisation-advisory-centre-claims-gardasil-deaths-mainly-motor-vehicle-accidents/

I have a thorough understanding of the risks and benefits of all the medications that I prescribe for or administer to my patients. In the case of (Patient’s name) ___________________________, age _________, whom I have examined, I find that certain risk factors exist that justify the recommended vaccinations. The following is a list of said risk factors and the vaccinations that will protect against them:

Risk Factor ____________________________________________

Vaccination ___________________________________________

Risk Factor ____________________________________________

Vaccination ___________________________________________

Risk Factor ____________________________________________

Vaccination ___________________________________________

Risk Factor ____________________________________________

Vaccination ___________________________________________

Risk Factor ____________________________________________

Vaccination ___________________________________________

Risk Factor ____________________________________________

Vaccination ___________________________________________

I am aware that vaccines typically contain many of the following:

* Aluminium hydroxide

* Aluminium phosphate

* Ammonium sulfate

* Amphotericin B

* Animal tissues: pig blood, horse blood, rabbit brain

* Dog kidney, monkey kidney,

* Calcium phosphate.

* Chick embryo, chicken egg, duck egg

* Calf (bovine) serum

* Betapropiolactone

* Fetal bovine serum

* Formaldehyde

* Formalin

* Gelatin

* Glycerol

* Human diploid cells (originating from human aborted fetal tissue)

* Hydrolized gelatin

* Mercury (Thimerosal which is 49.6% mercury)

* Monosodium glutamate (MSG)

* Neomycin

* Neomycin sulfate

* Phenol red indicator

* Phenoxyethanol (antifreeze)

* Potassium diphosphate

* Potassium monophosphate

* Polymyxin B

* Polysorbate 20

* Polysorbate 80

* Porcine (pig) pancreatic hydrolysate of casein

* Residual MRC5 proteins

* Sorbitol

* Tri(n)butylphosphate,

* VERO cells, a continuous line of monkey kidney cells, and

* Washed sheep red blood cells

and hereby warrant that these ingredients are safe for injection into the body of my patient. I have thoroughly researched reports to the contrary, such as the reports that Thimerosal causes severe neurological damage, autism and Alzheimer’s disease and that formalin, which is used in the manufacture of over half of all vaccines, causes chemical damage to vaccine proteins and creates reactive chemical groups called carbonyls which can mean that the immune system overreacts once infection occurs and attacks the body in a damaging way. Although I am aware of these reports, I do not find any of them credible.

I am aware that Dr Maurice Hilleman of Merck stated that Merck knowingly distributed millions of vials of polio vaccine that were contaminated with Simian Virus 40 (SV40) [1] and that SV40 is causally linked by some researchers to non-Hodgkin”s lymphoma and mesotheliomas in humans as well as in experimental animals, [2]. I hereby warrant that the vaccines I employ in my practice do not contain SV40 or any other live viruses. (Alternately, I hereby warrant that said SV40 virus or other viruses pose no substantive risk to my patient).

Gardasil Vaccine

I am aware that the vaccine manufacturer, Merck advises on page 14 of the Gardasil insert that the vaccine may lead to an INCREASE in precancerous lesions in women who already have relevant HPV types and I am aware that Judicial Watch has uncovered FDA reports under the Freedom of Information Act which show that Gardasil led to an increase in the incidence of precancerous lesions by 44.6% in women who had relevant HPV types, [3]. I am aware that by October 2008, over 10,000 adverse reactions, including 27 deaths had been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System about Gardasil. I am aware that cervical cancer usually develops in the late 20s to mid 30s and the protection period of Gardasil is estimated to be 5 years, which means that if my patient gets a first set of shots when she is 10 years old, she will need at least 2-4 additional booster shots to make it through her 30s and in so doing expose herself to the potential side effects of Gardasil over and over again.

I have read the report from Merck which mentions Gardasil was shown to reduce pre-cancers by only 12.2% to 16.5% in the general population and know that my patient will still need to have regular smear tests after she has been vaccinated. I have read information regarding Gardasil thoroughly and do not regard the reports that it causes harm as credible and deem it safe and worthwhile to administer it to my patient.

Flu Vaccine

I am aware that most flu shots contain mercury and I have thoroughly researched the reports which indicate mercury is highly neurotoxic. I am aware that Hugh Fudenberg, MD, an immunogeneticist with nearly 850 papers published in peer review journals, has reported that if an individual had 5 consecutive flu shots between 1970 and 1980 (the years studied), his/her chances of getting Alzheimer’s Disease is 10 times higher than if they had zero, one, or two shots, [4]. I am aware of the reports that flu vaccines were deliberately contaminated with the deadly avian flu virus and distributed to 18 countries by the American company Baxter and that this was believed to be part of a plan to provoke a pandemic, [5]. I am also aware that flu shots do not necessarily protect people against getting the flu, but regard it as worthwhile administering a mercury-containing form of this vaccine to my patient.

In order to protect my patient’s well being, I have taken the following steps to guarantee that the vaccines I will use will contain no damaging contaminants.

I have personally investigated the reports made to the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) and state that it is my professional opinion that the vaccines I am recommending are safe for administration to a child under the age of 5 years.

The bases for my opinion are itemized on Exhibit A, attached hereto, — “Doctor’s Bases for Professional Opinion of Vaccine Safety.” (Please itemize each recommended vaccine separately along with the bases for arriving at the conclusion that the vaccine is safe for administration to a child under the age of 5 years.)

The professional journal articles I have relied upon in the issuance of this Doctor’’s Warranty of Vaccine Safety are itemized on Exhibit B , attached hereto, — “Scientific Articles in Support of Doctor’s Warranty of Vaccine Safety.”

The professional journal articles that I have read which contain opinions adverse to my opinion are itemized on Exhibit C, attached hereto, — “Scientific Articles Contrary to Doctor’s Opinion of Vaccine Safety.”

The reasons for my determining that the articles in Exhibit C were invalid are delineated in Attachment D , attached hereto, — “Doctor’s Reasons for Determining the Invalidity of Adverse Scientific Opinions.”

Hepatitis B Vaccine

I understand that 60 percent of patients who are vaccinated for Hepatitis B will lose detectable antibodies to Hepatitis B within 12 years. I understand that in 1996 only 54 cases of Hepatitis B were reported to the CDC in the 0-1 year age group. I understand that in the VAERS, there were 1,080 total reports of adverse reactions from Hepatitis B vaccine in 1996 in the 0-1 year age group, with 47 deaths reported.

I understand that 50 percent of patients who contract Hepatitis B develop no symptoms after exposure. I understand that 30 percent will develop only flu-like symptoms and will have lifetime immunity. I understand that 20 percent will develop the symptoms of the disease, but that 95 percent will fully recover and have lifetime immunity.

I understand that 5 percent of the patients who are exposed to Hepatitis B will become chronic carriers of the disease. I understand that 75 percent of the chronic carriers will live with an asymptomatic infection and that only 25 percent of the chronic carriers will develop chronic liver disease or liver cancer, 10-30 years after the acute infection.

The following scientific studies have been performed to demonstrate the safety of the Hepatitis B vaccine in children under the age of 5 years.

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

In addition to the recommended vaccinations as protections against the above cited risk factors, I have recommended other non-vaccine measures to protect the health of my patient and have enumerated said non-vaccine measures on Exhibit D, attached hereto, “Non-vaccine Measures to Protect Against Risk Factors.”

I am issuing this Doctor’s Warranty of Vaccine Safety in my professional capacity as the attending physician to (Patient’s name) ________________________________.

Regardless of the legal entity under which I normally practice medicine, I am issuing this statement in both my business and individual capacities and hereby waive any legal immunities from liability lawsuits in the instant case.

I issue this document of my own free will after consultation with competent legal counsel whose name is _____________________________.

Genetic testing is here to stay, it would seem. It has become increasingly common in the US, for example, and this report in the Sydney Morning Herald comments on some cases in Australia where people have been refused life insurance because of medical conditions revealed by genetic testing. In one case, a woman was refused insurance due to a genetic predisposition to cancer.

SEATTLE (AP) -- Parents rarely worry about measles and rubella these days, but the growing ranks of those who skip vaccinations for their children have health officials concerned that the sometimes deadly diseases could stage a comeback.

There are parents who skip at least one shot over fears about vaccine safety and unproven links between vaccinations and autism, worries about overwhelming their baby's immune system and because it's relatively easy to opt out in the state, experts say.

Now, the decisions of these parents threaten to create a public health risk. If enough parents forgo vaccinations, measles and other long-contained diseases could return, officials warn.

Over the past decade, the percentage of children starting school without at least one required vaccination doubled from 2.7 percent to 5.5 percent in King County alone, according to the state Department of Health. That translates into 1,100 of 20,500 students.

"It looks like our community immunity - it's what people call 'herd immunity' - is in fact eroding," said Dr. Ed Marcuse, associate medical director at Seattle Children's and a national immunization expert. "I am worried about an outbreak of measles in many counties in Washington state."

Marcuse is concerned because measles is not a benign disease. Babies, for example, can develop crippling and fatal complications, such as brain inflammation.

Doctors may argue these vaccine-resistant parents are misled by flawed information. But they face a tough debate with parents who simply want to know why their child got sick.

Jena Dalpez did everything by the book after her son Camden was born, dutifully taking him to the doctor for his shots. Then one day his temperature spiked to 104 degrees hours after a routine vaccination.

Over the next 48 hours, Camden's condition deteriorated and his mother rushed him to Seattle Children's after he passed dime-sized chunks of tissue in his stool.

Doctors never told her exactly what was wrong, but the ordeal eventually convinced Dalpez that a vaccination somehow triggered the list of health problems - autism, autoimmune disorder and stomach ailments - that continue to plague her now 7-year-old son.

"We were once believers in the system," the 42-year-old former health care consultant said. "I just think the system is broken."

Dalpez responded by declining to vaccinate her 2- year-old daughter.

Dalpez and other parents highlight research, much of it dismissed by mainstream medical organizations, to support their suspicions. But essentially this group of vaccine doubters wants more research on vaccine safety.

They suggest vaccine resistance is moving from the fringe to the mainstream, and includes those with law degrees, professors and business owners. It has already invaded Dalpez's upper-middle-class Bothell neighborhood, where Dalpez says lawyers, an insurance underwriter and teacher, all with healthy children, have peppered Dalpez with questions about vaccines.

"Vaccination rates aren't going down just because parents like me are talking about our child's adverse reactions," Dalpez wrote in an e-mail. "They are going down because people are beginning to question the safety of the vaccine program."

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counter that they have spent millions on vaccine-safety research, but have not found causal links between vaccines and the rise in autism cases or other widespread health problems.

"By choosing not to vaccinate, they are choosing a theoretical risk for a known risk of preventable disease," said Kristine Sheedy, associate director for communication science at the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Researchers are still figuring out why more Washington parents make this choice. But they believe some parents simply forgot the havoc that eradicated diseases wreaked on society.

Doctors also suspect some parents skip vaccinations in Washington simply because they can.

That's because Washington has a liberal exemption policy. When parents enroll their children in public school, they can simply sign a personal or religious waiver, without supporting evidence.

"All you have to do is sign a line," said Michele Roberts, health promotion and communication manager for the state's Immunization Program.

The rise of parenting by Google likely plays a role, local doctors suggest. Ten years ago, the Internet was in its infancy.

Now parents can tap into a mind-boggling amount of research on everything from potty training to vaccines. The problem is that information isn't always reliable.

"There is just so much misinformation out there," said Dr. David Buchholz, a pediatrician who practices in Queen Anne.

There are plenty of other theories. Washington parents may be more receptive to alternative ideas on medicine, or simply overwhelmed by the sheer number of recommended childhood vaccinations, which rose from three vaccinations to 10 over the past two decades.

Then there's the Jenny McCarthy effect. The actress turned advocate has campaigned across the country about the dangers of vaccines, which she believes triggered her son's autism.

Two days after McCarthy appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," Buchholz noticed the time he spent talking with parents about vaccine safety jumped from 20 minutes a day to two hours.

Still, Buchholz said 95 percent of his patients decide to vaccinate their children after talking with him.

Overall, 69 percent of Washington children age 19 to 35 months received all of their shots in 2007, down from 71 percent the year before, and below the national average of 77 percent, according to the Department of Health.

Regardless of the merits of arguments backing vaccine resistance, public health officials have little choice but to deal with its fallout.

Measles is already popping up in the developed world. Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Israel and other nations are coping with outbreaks of the highly contagious disease, says Dr. Jeffrey Duchin, chief of communicable disease and immunization at Public Health - Seattle & King County.

"That is the first disease you would expect, and other diseases you would expect to surge back (are) mumps, pertussis" and chicken pox, Duchin added. Measles "is basically out of control in the British population."

Local public health officials are not predicting an epidemic in Washington in the near future, but are concerned about outbreaks in vulnerable groups, such as homeschooled children. In 2008, there were 19 reported cases of measles in the state, the highest level in 12 years.

In response, Group Health Cooperative launched a multiyear project in January to explore why parents opt out and what to do about it. The CDC, meanwhile, is working with Washington health officials on a National Infant Immunization Week campaign that will run in late April.

The agency also indicated support for research into the possibility that a small group of children may be genetically wired for negative reactions to vaccines.

Suspicious parents want scientists to dig deeper and either confirm or allay their fears, said Lauren Marshall, a 49-year-old Stanford Law School graduate, who suspects a vaccine may have triggered her daughter's Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism.

"Ultimately, science needs to do the research," Marshall said.

"If parents lose confidence, we are going to end up with huge groups of people who are not vaccinated."

Australian parents are being urged to safeguard their families from influenza by vaccinating their kids.

Mosquitoes transmit disease, and so do children.

With the influenza season approaching, Australian parents are being urged to safeguard their families from a major source of the virus's spread - by vaccinating their kids.

'Preventing it within the child has a wider benefit, because it prevents it spreading within the family and then the community as well,' said Professor Robert Booy, who is head of paediatrics at

The Children's Hospital at Westmead in Sydney.

Prof Booy was speaking, along with other experts, at an Influenza Specialist Group event in Sydney on Tuesday.

The gathering heard almost 1,500 Australian children become so ill with influenza every year that they require hospital care.

It is estimated if all children under the age of five were vaccinated against the virus, it could cut the incidence across the whole population by 22 to 38 per cent.

No proof or conclusive evidence but the term used to justify vaccines is Could?what a load of bull spinning crap

Prof Booy said stopping a child from contracting influenza also had a protective effect against other potentially life-threatening illnesses such as meningococcal and pneumococcal infections.

'There is some evidence that it's the viral infection (influenza) that damages the throat, which allows bacteria like the meningococcus or the pneumococcus to invade the blood stream,' Prof Booy said.

'So yes, there is some evidence ... that preventing flu might also have a secondary benefit of preventing a different bacterial infection.'

But NO conclusive evidence whatsoever

Influenza outbreaks typically occur during the winter months of July to September, meaning vaccinations are best carried out in autumn.

Current Australian immunisation guidelines recommend annual influenza vaccinations for anyone who wishes to protect themselves, including children aged six months and over.

Symptoms of the virus include fever, headaches, muscle aches and pain and in children it can also lead to vomiting and diarrhoea.

Infants in 40 childcare centres across Sydney are taking part in a vaccination trial in the hope of reducing the number admitted to hospital suffering influenza-related complications of pneumonia, bronchitis and asthma.

The spread of influenza slows during school holiday periods, indicating it is children mixing together at schools that encourages the virus to move swiftly through a community.

'They are a bit like a mosquito,' Prof Booy said of the virus in children.'And they are annoying, they make a lot of noise, they jump from one person to the other, hugging and kissing and slobbering ... it's quite a good analogy.'

Now would you trust a NWO sponsored Professor like Robert Booy?"They are a bit like a mosquito"Really now...mmm...I guess that makes Professor Robert Booya NWO cockroach... right

Greenpeace has welcomed the Tasmanian Government’s announcement that it will extend its ban on the release of genetically engineered (GE) crops to the environment for at least another five years.

According to Greenpeace genetic engineering campaigner Louise Sales “unlike the Governments of New South Wales and Victoria, Tasmania has done the right thing by farmers and consumers. It makes no sense for Tasmania to throw away its clean, green GE free status for a technology with no proven benefits.”

The Tasmanian Government’s decision not to allow the commercial growing of GE canola is already starting to pay off, with Tasmania becoming a supplier of choice when it comes to the GE-free grain market. This year Japanese trading company Kanematsu Corporation imported 1500 tonnes of Tasmanian canola seed, and it wants more, for a Tasmanian-branded non-GE cooking oil.

New business development manager Steven Fairbrother says "It's down to the consumer. If they don't want GE canola, you can't force GE canola on them."

The Minister for Primary Industries and Water, David Llewellyn, says that the State's GE-free status is a key factor in the Tasmanian Brand.

"Tasmania's GE-free status is a vital factor for our primary producers, helping them realise their full potential in international and interstate markets," Mr Llewellyn said.

"The decision by some other Australian states to relax their GE bans has actually increased the value of Tasmania's GE-free status. It provides us with opportunities for even better Tasmanian access to prime markets.”

The commercial release of GE crops in Tasmania is now banned until at least November 2014. The ban includes a zero-tolerance standard for non-GE seed coming into the state. However the Tasmanian Government is already under pressure from the seed industry to weaken this standard. Despite claiming that GE canola can be effectively segregated, seed companies are now saying it is impossible to guarantee that seed is completely free from GE material.

Roberts Ltd agronomist, Terry Horan, says all states except Tasmania have a 0.1 per cent allowance for GE material in planting seed and his company is urging the Tasmanian Government to ‘fall in line’.

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TAMIFLU, one of the two drugs being used to combat swine flu, has been linked to suicidal behaviour in young people and has been ineffective at treating the current strain of human flu in the United States.

In Japan — the world's biggest user of Tamiflu, as the Japanese take it to treat regular influenza — the drug has been linked to eight deaths, including teenagers who have jumped from buildings and one who ran in front of a truck.

And resistance to Tamiflu among Americans with regular flu has leapt from 12 per cent last year to 98 per cent this year, leading to fears people with swine flu could also develop resistance.

According to Japan's health ministry, 128 people reported behaving abnormally after taking Tamiflu between 2004 and 2007 — 43 aged under 10, 57 aged 10 to 19, and 28 aged over 20. Five teens and three adults died in this period, most by jumping from buildings.

Of Tamiflu's estimated 50 million administered doses, about 60 per cent have been in Japan.

According to the Australian federal Department of Health, the Therapeutic Goods Administration has received two Australian reports of adverse psychiatric reactions to Tamiflu.

"These were reported in a 23-year-old who developed agitation, fever and headache after taking Tamiflu for an unspecified period of time, and depression and anxiety in a 39-year-old female," said spokeswoman Kay McNiece.

"There are no Australian reports of suicidal thoughts or behaviour. The (TGA) has received no reports of death associated with use of Tamiflu and no reports of adverse psychiatric (reactions) in children."

Ms McNiece said the Government's stockpile included Relenza in case anyone developed an adverse reaction to Tamiflu. She said the Government had stockpiled more Tamiflu than Relenza because it was taken in pill form, a delivery method preferred by patients, while Relenza must be inhaled via a Diskhaler device.

Tamiflu's safety information states: "People with the flu, particularly children and adolescents, may be at an increased risk of self-injury and confusion shortly after taking Tamiflu and should be closely monitored."

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